Henry Beachell

Henry Monroe Beachell (1906 to 2006) was an American plant breeder whose research led to hybrid rice cultivars that saved millions of people from starvation. Working for the United States Department of Agriculture in Texas he created nine rice varieties that came to account for more than 90 percent of United States long grain rice production, and after joining the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines in 1963 he created the high yielding rice variety IR8, released in 1966, which raised Asian rice yields from one or two tons per hectare to four or five tons per hectare and became a central achievement of the Green Revolution.